Serving a sentence in the Penitentiary
Inside the Penitentiary, watch the routine and your remaining sentence. Work, stored belongings and release each follow their own rules.
Visual overview
Diagram of reported mechanics. The text retains the full conditions and settings.
Intake and sentence time
The Penitentiary stays at noon and does not allow ordinary bed or respawn-anchor returns. Its generated complex has 48 cells, A-1 through B-24. Older concepts describing hundreds of cells do not match this build.
Intake stores carried inventory as evidence and issues a Prison Pickaxe. Time normally counts while online inside the prison; offline time defaults off. The safety cap is 8 online hours, except the 60-online-minute cap used with older Afterfall or a missing needs-pause hook.
Authorized release, time served, bought-down time or valid escape returns eligible evidence; overflow goes to deliveries. Contraband and prison-only tools are stripped, valuables can remain, and escape does not add fugitive status.
See the prison dimension
Historical J1 development view of the Penitentiary. The complex is code-built and seed-dependent; this image does not promise an identical layout in every world or replace the current 48-cell finding.
Historical J1 quarry and cell-wing view. These are unchanged supplied captures, not a new dimension visit. Credit: Civic Frontier development evidence.
Daily routine
| Phase | Default length | What to do/check |
|---|---|---|
| Roll call | 2 minutes | Searches may confiscate carried/worn contraband |
| Work | 8 minutes | Quarry/laundry/kitchen/workshop actions can work time off; recent activity required |
| Yard | 6 minutes | Movement/social period |
| Lights-out | 4 minutes | Return to cell; outside detection can trigger pursuit/solitary |
Default solitary is 15 minutes for contraband/escape capture and 5 minutes for lights-out. Misbehavior does not add sentence time. Older “+30 minutes” design descriptions are superseded. Solitary and route cooldowns remain penalties within the existing sentence.
Mine and trade finds
Mining Prison Stone with the issued pickaxe leaves Spent Prison Stone, regenerating after 60 seconds. One random roll is compared to cumulative probabilities: the following outcomes are mutually exclusive, not independent drops. Most blocks yield none of these finds.
| Find | Chance per block | Sale price or use |
|---|---|---|
| Iron nugget | 1/100 | 1 × index |
| Gold nugget | 1/150 | 2 × index |
| Coal | 1/120 | 1 × index |
| Gold ingot | 1/2,000 | 15 × index |
| Emerald | 1/4,000 | 25 × index |
| Flint | 1/150 | Contraband material |
| String | 1/150 | Contraband material |
| Wooden sword | 1/600 | Contraband weapon |
| Wooden shovel | 1/600 | Contraband digging |
| Bent Spoon | 1/800 | Contraband tool |
| Torn Map Scrap | 1/1,500 | Quarter-map of current sewer maze |
| Key Piece | 1/2,500 | Three craft a Warden Key |
Commissary prices are bread 2, baked potato 2, cooked chicken 4, Poster 10, all indexed. Find sales use the public purse and count as earnings. Buy-down costs 5 per remaining minute × index, paid from the prisoner’s own wallet to the sentencing authority (burned for server sentences). Friends have no direct “pay this prisoner’s time” action.
Rebuild and retained items
Weekly rebuild defaults to Sunday 00:00 in the server timezone. A fresh seeded slot is built; warnings/relocation preserve remaining time, wallets and earned/stashed items. Old prison slots remain in the void: deleting old region files is not implemented automatic disk reclamation.
Mechanical spoilers for escape and outside rescue are kept on a separate discovery page. Registered content distinguishes prison-only blocks, issued tools and creative/admin items.
Admin & server owner reference
Exact identifiers, original fields and source locators are preserved below. These records describe the documented mod version; they are not commands to run or proof of a new gameplay test.
Original wording and exact fields
The shared dimension is civic_frontier:penitentiary: fixed noon, flat void generator, Y=0 through a height of 256, with no usable bed/anchor respawning. Its code-built seeded complex has
Registry IDs
civic_frontier:prison_pickaxecivic_frontier:prison_stonecivic_frontier:spent_prison_stonecivic_frontier:commissary_counter
Sources & verification
Evidence: pdf-derived. Feature status: implemented-static. Article coverage: ready.
PDF pages 25-26, 65-67 · 16 Prison life · E31, E72-E76
Civic Frontier report, reviewed October 23, 2026. Implementation and historical tests are reported findings unless a direct catalog inspection is separately identified. Pack overrides unknown.
The wiki has not independently playtested report-derived instructions. Your server or modpack settings may change them.